New Experiments and Observations on Electricity: Made at Philadelphia in America 3 Parts in 1

Benjamin Franklin

Fine binding. Bound in modern tree calf
leather. Cover leather has been acid stained to approximate a lightning
strike. Gilt spine, red and green moroccan leather spine labels. Gilt
dentelle. Housed in a custom-made electric blue leather clamshell
case. A silver key has been inlaid into the front board of the case.
Silver lightning shoots out of the key. Beautiful hand made marbled
endpapers in both the book and case.

Collated: 86, 1plate., 87-109,
110-154 pp, 1 illustration. Marginal chipping with loss to of title
page and end page. Contemporary notations in the margins of Part I
reflecting Franklin's later corrections. 4 leaves are in facsimile: p.
13-14, 85-86, the ad page, and the plate in Part I.

Printing and the Mind of Man calls Franklin's work
"the most important scientific book of eighteenth-century America".
Franklin's experiments showed conclusively that lightning is electrical
and he further deduced the positive and negative nature of an electrical
charge. "The most dramatic result of Franklin's researches was the
proof that lightning is really an electrical phenomenon. Others had
made such a suggestion before him - even Newton himself - but it was
Franklin who provided the experimental proof. In 1752 Franklin flew a
kite in a thunderstorm and attached a key to its string. In this
experiment he collected electric charges in a Leiden jar and showed that
atmospheric and frictional or machine-made electricity are the
same...His reputation as a scientist was immediately established by the
publication of the results of his researches in a series of letters
addressed to Peter Collinson, a London merchant and naturalist..."
(PMM). Franklin was given the Copley Medal, equivalent of the Nobel
Prize, in 1753 for his work in electricity described in this book. An
extremely important book in the history of science.